I haven’t figured out how to show someone what isn’t there anymore. I can tell you about it. I can bring you to the place where it was or where it happened. Yet. It’s done. It’s gone. I cannot bring you to it. It cannot be a memory if it is here right now.

I can shower you in descriptions and hope your imagination leads you down a somewhat accurate path. I guess a photo would be the closest. But despite cameras’ ubiquity, it is impossible to photograph everything in life.

This is being typed from the inside of a house battered by wind – we were also battered by wind this past Tuesday. The severity was sufficient for the city to pepper us in text alerts like “secure any remaining holiday decorations” (ahem, “remaining“? a bit judgmental, eh?). At work, I walked from one far-flung section of downtown to another, remarking that the wind wasn’t that bad. I’d biked in worse.

Then I had a chance to look at the messages on my cell phone. Oh.

In the back corner of my yard is a Norway maple that is either two trees growing in a V away from each other, or one tree in a V growing like a split, I can’t quite tell. There’s powerlines running through the middle. This is a tree that’s been subject to the power company’s arborist. Tree butchers, one might call them. The tree in my front yard is even worse.

Norway maples aren’t exactly beloved in North America. Native to Europe and Western Asia, they are invasive in New York state. They have shallow roots and a very thick canopy that prevents sunshine from finding its way to the ground. In the forest, this results in a decline in botanical diversity – everything needs light. They create conditions that our native sugar and red maples cannot thrive in. Grasses, plants, everything needs light. Norway maples intercept all of the light on the way down.

In the back corner of my double city lot, it reached far and created a leafy ceiling that was a perpetually shaded corner. We had one of the hammocks under it. It was so dark that even hostas struggled to grow. But it was reliably cooler and like a nature-made pergola to retreat to on hot days.

Its main branch supported a tree swing. It was a nice spot to relax, gently swaying in a moment’s break from the garden. Sometimes you would find most of the kids in the neighborhood on it, whirling around. Or pushing it each other. And me, watching that branch, knowing that the swing advertised a 700 pound weight limit but what about the tree???

It would not be children that brought down the tree. The wind took it upon itself to do some pruning. My husband, who works from home, told me he heard the crash and heard the snap of telephone wires coming down with it. The downed branches were most of the tree.

One of my favorite thing about the yard, and about South Buffalo, are the trees. They reach over the old houses. They stretch over the streets. They say “this place has been lived in for awhile” and give the birds a place to dwell. There’s just something nice about being in a place with a lot of trees. New-build developments feel so barren to me – just a house, and space. Beyond how houses that already exist are usually more ecologically friendly than creating new ones, the lack of trees feels to me like a further affront to nature. I’ve seen song birds, hawks, squirrels, skunks, raccoons, opossums, and deer on my property. I can get where I need to go through foot-powered transportation most times. It feels more balanced. And it is the case that this street was likely barren in the late 1890s when they started developing it, and it used to be Seneca territory after they conquered the Wenro and maybe the Ebenezers got it fraudulently so it’s not like this area lacks a colorful origin story. The past is done, unreachable, and unchangeable. It’s what you do in the present to prepare for the future and cope with the consequences of what was.

Unfortunately, a beloved part of my yard transitioned from a facet of the present to an unreturnable past. We’ll get an arborist to look at what remains to figure out what to do next. My leafy pergola now only exists in my memory. I’ll describe to my home’s visitors what was. I’ll walk to where it reached, motioning, talking about it. We’ll hang the tree swing somewhere else. I’ll probably grow new things and delight in their existence. That is the way: be here now. Move forward.